1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display system and an electronic device included in the display system and, more specifically, to a technique for displaying an operation manual of the electronic device.
2. Description of the Background Art
Recently, digital multifunctional peripherals integrally having a plurality of functions such as copy function, printer function and FAX function are installed in many offices and places of business. Typically, a paper-based operation manual (instruction booklet) is attached to an electronic device such as the digital multifunctional peripheral. In these days, electronic devices come to have many functions and accordingly, the number of pages of the operation manuals is increasing. As a result, the cost for printing the operation manuals increased, and the cost of printing comes to be a burden on manufacturers. In order to reduce printing cost, for recent digital multifunctional peripherals, operation manuals based on electronic database (E-manual) come to be commonly used.
By way of example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2003-198767 (hereinafter referred to as '767 Reference) discloses a digital copy machine using such a manual based on electronic database. The digital copy machine according to '767 Reference has the service manual stored in a hard disk, and the service manual can be updated by a service person.
In an apparatus such as a digital multifunctional peripheral in which an operation panel is provided as a dedicated user interface (hereinafter, user interface will be denoted as “UI”), when the operation manual is displayed on the UI screen (display device), the operation manual fully occupies the UI screen. Therefore, operation while viewing the manual is difficult. Further, in a conventional digital multifunctional peripheral, in order to display that portion of the manual which corresponds to the operation the user is currently doing, a desired piece of information must be searched out from descriptions related to many functions, and at that time, for example, a number of click operations are necessary. Such a procedure requires time and effort. The digital copy machine described in '767 Reference also has the same problem.
As a solution to such a problem, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2010-219879 (hereinafter referred to as '879 Reference) discloses a help information providing system for displaying help information in accordance with a state of digital multifunctional peripheral on a portable telephone. The help information providing system according to '879 Reference includes a digital multifunctional peripheral, a help server providing the help information for the digital multifunctional peripheral, and a portable telephone for displaying the help information provided by the help server. The digital multifunctional peripheral, the help server and the portable telephone are connected to a network. The digital multifunctional peripheral transmits its own device ID and a state code to the help server. The portable telephone extracts a marker image attached to the digital multifunctional peripheral from a photo image data picked-up for the digital multifunctional peripheral, obtains the device ID and a surface code of the digital multifunctional peripheral from the marker image, and transmits the obtained ID and code to the help server. Based on the device ID and the state code transmitted from the digital multifunctional peripheral and on the device ID and the surface code transmitted from the portable telephone, the help server transmits help information corresponding to the state of digital multifunctional peripheral to the portable telephone. Further, the portable telephone combines the help information transmitted from the help server with the photo image data to generate and display image data for providing help information.
In the help information providing system according to '879 Reference, in order to display the help information corresponding to the state of digital multifunctional peripheral on the portable telephone, it is necessary to extract a marker image attached to the digital multifunctional peripheral from the photo image data of the digital multifunctional peripheral, to obtain the device ID and the surface code of the digital multifunctional peripheral from the marker image, and to transmit these to the help server. Therefore, the operation for displaying the help information on the portable telephone requires much time and effort.